“Choice” is the popular slogan of those who promote the “right” to have an abortion. For them it’s all about “choice”. However, no pro-choicer admits that women experience problems in their health after an abortion.

Medical experts in countries like the USA, Canada and the UK have claimed that there is no evidence of post-abortion trauma, in spite of a number of studies to the contrary, which have been ignored.

That state of denial has been shaken.

On October 27, 2006, 15 prominent medical doctors wrote a letter to the editor of the Times of London. The group included a past president of the Royal College of Psychiatrists and some of the top general practitioners, psychiatrists and obstetricians and gynecologists in the UK. They asked the official bodies regulating obstetricians and psychiatrists to revise their guidance on abortion as it affects the mental health of young women.

The group referred to a study done in New Zealand by New Zealand psychologist David Fergusson and published in the January edition of the Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry. This study indicated that young women who have had abortions exhibit twice the level of mental health problems, and three times the risk of depression, as those who had given birth or never been pregnant.

According to the letter in the Times, "Since women having abortions can no longer be said to have a low risk of suffering from psychiatric conditions such as depression, doctors have a duty to advise about long-term adverse psychological consequences of abortion.”

The author of the cited research, David Fergusson, intended to correct design flaws in previous studies in the field. He tracked women from birth to age 25, and found that those who had abortions exhibited increased tendencies toward suicidal thoughts, depression, drug dependence and other mental health problems even after adjusting for prior mental health problems and other factors.

Accepted wisdom in Canada is that abortion is benign. So too in the UK, where the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists' website tells women that abortion causes limited to no harm. They write that “for most women, an abortion is safer than carrying a pregnancy and having a baby.”

In the United States, after the New Zealand study was published, the American Psychological Association has had to withdraw their statement on the subject; which cited no evidence of psychological harm to women as a result of abortion.

Doctors in the UK took note of the New Zealand study and are acknowledging the long-term adverse psychological consequences of abortion. Will those in the Caribbean who recommend abortion do the same?

Based on a report by Andrea Mrozek, Manager of Research and Communications at the Institute of Marriage and Family Canada, published in the National Post in Canada on November 7, 2006.

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